BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto residents are saying that a consultant didn’t focus on neighborhood shopping centers when coming up with an economic strategy for the city.
Instead, the Washington D.C.-based consultant, called Streetsense, came up with recommendations for destinations where the tax revenue is higher, like University Avenue and California Avenue.
Larisa Ortiz, a managing director for Streetsense, said the city should ease its regulations to get more businesses to choose Palo Alto.
Council members at Monday night’s meeting accepted the economic strategy, which will guide city policies and projects moving forward.
But not before several residents pushed back.
“Not all retail should be viewed from a city tax revenue lens. Smaller retail clusters that serve residents are a critical public benefit,” said Becky Sanders and Sheri Furman, co-chairs of the resident group Palo Alto Neighborhoods, in a email to council before the meeting.
“Palo Alto continues to lose its heart,” Midtown resident Celina Tracy said. “We no longer have a toy store, a bakery, a bowling alley. We continue to lose more of Palo Alto’s traditional and family-friendly local businesses.”
The city is paying Streetscape $261,995 for its services.
Tensions are especially high in Midtown right now because a longtime anchor, Mike’s Diner Bar, is facing eviction for paying rent one day late.
Owner Mike Wallau and his supporters showed up to Monday’s council meeting to push back on what they see as an injustice to a restaurant has been there for 28 years. More than 1,000 people have signed a petition supporting him.
“I want to make it the crown jewel of Midtown,” Wallau said on Monday.
Council members were on his side.
“So many of us felt that eviction letter was unjust and unfair and just absolute crap,” Vice Mayor Greer Stone said.
But Ortiz said the city is limited in what it can do.
“You influence but don’t control the actions of private property owners,” she said.
The best thing to do is build relationships with property owners so you can call them when something like this happens, Ortiz said.
A real estate attorney can also work with tenants to write leases that protect them from getting evicted after a major renovation, like Wallau just finished, Ortiz said.
Streetsense’s analysis and recommendations in Midtown missed the mark, said Annette Glanckopf, co-chair of the Midtown Residents Association.
The report said there is an oversupply of retail in Palo Alto for the current market because more people are shopping online.
But in the association’s annual survey of city issues, Midtown and Palo Verde residents said the need for more retail is their number one concern, Glanckopf said.
The report also said these shopping centers were least impacted by the pandemic. But in the last six years, Midtown has seen 15 retail businesses close — not including four lost to a fire last year, Glanckopf said.
There are now five beauty salons and 13 businesses that serve kids in Midtown, but not the kinds of stores that people need to shop at, Glanckopf said.
“Midtown is out of balance,” she said.
The report didn’t mention the Edgewood Shopping Center or retail businesses on El Camino Real in south Palo Alto.
First, who is Ortiz to determine what a city can and cannot do to preserve its retail when she and StreetSense showed such ignorance of the basics, including where PA’s retail is and where housing will go>?
Many of us were horrified by the gaps in StreetSense’s study and its simplistic recommendations better suited to other communities and unanimous in our praise for Annette Glanckopf’s remarks, perspective and common sense.
Horrified when we weren’t laughing at their cliche-ridden word salad that ignored the obvious and PA’s REAL issues.
Did no one realize that letting companies like Palantir have company cafeterias might have hurt downtown retail/restaurants and pedestrian traffic? Has no one talked to the restaurant owners?? Of course not. Clearly we need another $$$$ consultant study of the difference in pedestrian traffic at various times of day,
Let Annette G. and other INFORMED RESIDENTS handle this instead of consultants/staff blithely unaware that in 2015 PA tried and failed to position itself as a tourist destination after wasting $$$,$$$+ on a senior manager and program for a few years, that PA withdrew from a regional tourist organization in 2019 because it too was a waste of $$$$$ money promoting tours of offices which are now empty!
But since PA is a place where bad ideas never die, we’re now hearing recommendations that new apps showing where Facebook’s offices were will revitalize downtown when a wifi site won the Entertainment category for Best of Palo Alto??
Just accept Bill Ross’s point that tourists attending Stanford games has economic benefit and give our bureaucrats their Mission Accomplished checkoff.
How could staff accept a report ignoring El Camino (where new housing will go) and other neighborhood shopping areas? Who at City Hall gave them direction and is wasting OUR money?
How could they ignore common sense issues like how filthy it is downtown and the fact that many of us shop / dine in other nearby towns?
Has anyone bothered to talk to businesses displaced by unaffordable rents? Or suggested that Midtown landlords pick up their trash and maintain their properties?
How could they recommend turning PA into a tourist destination when that was tried back in 2015 and — after wasting money on a senior Tourism Development manager and the program for a few years — until they realized that no one wanted to tour office buildings?
Many cities waste money on consultants who know nothing about the area they’re studying. Instead of talking to locals — residents and business owners — they use a generic study model that provides generic results. Example: Larisa Ortiz, managing director at Streetsense, noted that in some retail locations like California Avenue “certain types of businesses, including beauty salons, barbershops, fitness studios, medical offices and dry cleaners are the kinds of uses that help sustain many communities and neighborhood-serving business districts.” Did she know there’s a dry cleaners on Cal Ave? A shoe repair/sales shop? If she thinks those kinds of businesses sustain communities and neighborhoods, did report how street closures hurt those types of businesses?